BAILLEUL
Our next stop was Bailleul, a town of some fifteen thousand inhabitants
just over the Franco-Belgian frontier. Possibly it was never known
before the war, but it is now, for sooner or later everyone goes to
Bailleul: it was, until the taking over of the line below Arras, the
Mecca of the British Army.
But it was fifteen weary miles from Brielen, fifteen miles that we
stumbled over in a drizzling rain on slippery cobblestones before
turning up through an archway off the main street to our billets. Good
billets they were, too--a loft with ample straw for one platoon, a
school-house for the other three, and houses on another street for the
officers.
In spite of the early hour, about 3 o'clock, Madame was up and around
and soon made us fresh coffee and the inevitable omelette; then we
clattered up the steep little stairs to bed. F----, the sergeant who had
been promoted, joined us here and proved a jolly good sort. We went out
to hunt up new billets the next day. He, being a Quebecker, acted as
interpreter, as our room was too small and stuffy for two, and,
moreover, looked into the operating-room of a hospital opposite.
We were fortunate in finding another billet quite close--an important
point, as we were to mess together--and then took a stroll around the
town.
Bailleul is, like most French provincial towns, arranged like a star,
the Grande Place and Hotel de Ville forming the centre. We found our way
to the cathedral, where a white-haired old _cure_ showed us around,
pointing out the door leading to the great square tower and the axe
marks left by the German soldiers who burst it open. They had used the
tower as an observing post during the week their cavalry had held the
town the preceding October. The old man had been held as hostage by
them, together with the mayor and some other notables, but when asked if
he had been badly treated he was very non-committal. "Qu'est-ce que vous
voulez?" he answered. "C'est, la guerre!" That is the doctrine of
humility taught France in 1870. "C'est la guerre!" It is used to
explain anything from the shooting of civilians to the high cost of
hand-made lace!
In a jeweller's on the Grande Place we obtained a little fuller
information as to the Germans' actions. They had robbed Madame of all
her rings, deliberately broken up all her watch glasses--there was not
one to be obtained in the town--and smashed with their sword hilts the
glass of her show-cases. And across the square they had confiscated all
the champagne in a _cafe_, and when no more was forthcoming they piled
the tables on the _pave_ and burnt them; also she had heard----; but
here F----'s patience had worn out, and as he said "Hearsay evidence is
not admitted," so we said "Bonjour" and returned to billets.
Fortunately we did so, as we found we were slated to take a bathing
parade at 1 o'clock and would barely have time to lunch. However, we
caught the parade in time and marched the men to an old factory labelled
"Divisional Baths." Here each man was supplied with a hot tub, soap and
a clean towel, and was issued on stepping out from his tub with
freshly-washed underwear, turning his soiled clothes in. This was a
splendid system, and when later the clothes were not only washed but
sterilised it ensured the men freedom for a short time at least from
vermin.
It took some time running the whole company through in batches of forty,
so we had a brief look around that part of the town. We also found that
at the asylum officers could get a real bath--full length that one could
stretch out in--at any time, but as it was late when our last man was
ready to march off, we simply returned to billets.
We found the streets full of ambulances, most of them being gas cases
from around Hill 60, and, in spite of the respirators, most of them
pretty bad cases.
Being somewhat of a chemist, I managed to see some of these cases a few
days later. The hospital was so crowded that many cases were lying on
stretchers in the garden that lies at the back of all these hideous
perpendicular French houses, shielded from the weather by an awning
only. But the worst cases were upstairs in a long hall--some eighteen of
them, none of which had any hope. Reeking with chlorine, their faces a
livid purple or an even ghastlier green, they lay there on the
stretchers, each with a little bowl beside him, coughing his life away.
And gradually the body would become weaker, the poor tortured lungs
fail to clear themselves of the secretion that poured from their
outraged tissue, and the fluid would accumulate slowly--oh, so
slowly!--and the agonised victim died, not with the merciful swiftness
of a bullet, but by gradual drowning.
This was the death that the Germans--ashamed of their own
brutality--afterwards described as painless and merciful!
They may find justification for their crimes in Belgium, they may even
smooth over the sinking of the _Lusitania_, but it must always be
remembered that they, and they alone, are responsible for introducing
into warfare this most ghastly and hideous death. It is said that German
scientists spent years in perfecting this horror, practising its powers
on plant life in the desert parts of Australia.
And the neutral nations--what of them? Are they not after all
"accessories after the fact" and equally guilty? For, having sworn in
solemn convention at the Hague to abstain from the use of asphyxiating
gases, they entered no definite protest, though public opinion ran high
on the subject.
Silence gives consent, and the poisoning of your enemy by chemical gases
has now become the proper and chivalrous thing to do, and warfare has
an added horror.
But the Allied chemists were at work devising means of lessening and
preventing this danger, and already success was crowning their efforts;
a new pattern respirator was devised and being issued, and a solution
for dipping it in was already available. Dr. G----, of Queen's
University, then serving as a subaltern in No. 2 Company, had been
experimenting in private and devised a solution which varied only in the
proportion of one of its elements from that adopted by the British Army,
so we were probably the first brigade in the B.E.F. to receive this
protection. Bottles of this fluid were carried by that long-suffering
man the platoon sergeant, and parades held showing the men how to adjust
and use the respirators.
Later we received flannel hoods, with mica windows, that had been dipped
in the same solution, and these gave place in turn to the present gas
helmet--a fearsome-looking affair, which, however, gives almost complete
protection.
Our stay in Bailleul was enlivened by the arrival of a draft and the
posting up of a schedule of training. The draft, needless to say, was
the more welcome of the two. With the draft--who were magnificently-built
men from the Middle West--we received a major who took command of the
company, Captain H---- dropping back as second in command. We thought
this was rather hard lines, but H---- made no complaint, though he felt
it rather keenly, but finding our new man had the South African ribbon,
we were a bit mollified.
Here, too, we held a memorial service for our fallen comrades, a
powerful address being delivered by Major the Rev. William Beatty, one
of the brigade chaplains. The troops, both old and new, were addressed,
too, by Major-General Alderson, the divisional commander, who spoke of
what the old men had done that the new men might understand what was
expected of them, and stated that from now on he would count on us all
as old troops.
Then we marched away feeling we were now a definite part of the old
regiment, and a few days later started our trek southward.
We had entered another epoch!